Bonnie and Clyde Ain't Got Nothin' On Us
by Panache
Summary: It turns out the hard part comes after. :: Dexter and Lumen in wake of everything.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Bonnie and Clyde Ain't Got Nothin' On Us

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers/Timeline: Up to "Hop a Freighter" (only in the vaguest sense)

Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.

Author's Notes: I never thought I'd be writing Dexter fanfic, but these two have taken over all my creative impulses. I''m writing and posting this now because I expect the possibilities explored in this piece to be blown straight to hell by the finale, and these two are too compelling not to have a couple of pieces of fanfic for them. The next part will be up some time in the next day or two. In the meantime I hope you enjoy and would love to know what you think.

* * *

"What now?"

Dexter asks her the question with blood still fresh on his hands, Jordan's body not yet cold.

"I . . ." she trails off, realizing that for the first time there's no answer, no one left to hunt, no clear next step to take. Her life is her own again, and Lumen doesn't have the slightest clue what to do with it. The prospect is exhilarating and terrifying all at once, "I don't know."

The words come out on a hiccup of giddy laughter that curves her mouth in a smile Dexter doesn't manage to match. He tries, attempts the facsimile, but there's something in his face, something utterly lost and maybe the tiniest bit hopeful.

The sight of it, of this man who's always been so certain, so sure, looking to her for guidance makes her reach out and swipe at the blood on the inside of his wrist with her thumb. "What should we do with the body?"

It's a question he can answer.

She knew it would be.

* * *

It turns out the hard part comes after. Later, when the aftermath has dissipated and she's supposed to start doing healthy, ordinary things, start picking up the pieces. This is the denoument, isn't it? Conflicts resolved, catharsis achieved, fade out on a peaceful life, someplace quiet and beautiful with newly found love.

Except she's in Miami which is about the least quiet place she's ever been. She's in Miami and Dexter is no one's idea of a romantic lead (except maybe hers) and she doesn't even know what her new peaceful life is supposed to look like.

She jangles a set of colorful plastic keys in front of Harrison, smiling as he latches on to them and whispers, "Strong grip. Like your dad."

Dexter flicks his eyes briefly away from the man he's been watching (_the one he hasn't mentioned and she's not supposed to notice_) and gives her a pained smile that means she's said exactly the wrong thing.

It's probably not supposed to look like this.

* * *

When you get down to it, the problem is she doesn't fit. Not here, not with him, not anymore. She can see it on his sister's face, feel it in Astor's cold shoulder. _'You don't belong here. Go away.'_ She's the interloper, the rebound girl, the other woman.

"He still loves my mom." Astor tells her frankly over lazy Sunday pancakes when Dexter gets up from the booth to go change Harrison. Her words obstinate, insistent, as if she's trying to make it so. "He's _always_ going to love my mom. You should know that."

Lumen thinks of the bite of Dexter's wedding ring between her fingers, the cool clink of it along her spine.

"I know."

Mercifully, Dexter slides back beside her before the conversation can go any further, reaching out as he does so to deftly remove the sugar packet she has between her fingers.

She didn't even realize she had it.

"Everything all right?"

"Fine. Everything's fine."

The little pile of raw sugar crystals in front of her tells a different story, but Dexter just brushes them into his hand and drops them in his coffee without a word.

All her hard-won progress dismantled by a twelve year-old girl and a dead woman she barely knows.

* * *

It takes her three days of trying to figure out how to bring up the subject and failing, before she finally gives up and stupidly does it anyway.

"You never talk about her."

Dexter stops gutting the fish Cody caught this morning mid-stroke. Some might say her timing could have been better, but Astor and Cody are down playing in the pool and when dinner's over he'll go back with them to the bungalow he and Deb are splitting for the summer so there's room for the kids and Dexter's never calmer than when he's working with knives.

"What do you want to know?" he finally asks, voice low and flat in a way she recognizes all too well.

She watches him run the filet knife between the skin and flesh with a fluid artistry she shouldn't find as beautiful as she does and gets up from her perch beside the counter. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. It's none of my business."

And that's really the problem, isn't it?

"It was my fault. That she died. It was all my fault."

Lumen turns around and shuts the door, leaning back against it as she does, trying to keep the rest of the world out, just for a moment. She doesn't say anything, can't say anything, can't even breathe. Just stands there, waiting, scared of what he might say, scared he won't say anything else.

"The man who did it. The Trinity Killer. I'd been-" he gropes for a word, "_hunting_ him. I made a mistake, got too close."

"Oh god." It's barely a whisper, a hushed exhale of breath she can't stop.

Dexter braces himself against the counter, muscles taught, face contorted in grief and rage and self-loathing and something she's not sure has a name. "She wasn't supposed to be there. She was supposed to be in the Keys. Only she'd forgotten her I.D. . . ." He shakes his head. "I didn't know. I _had_ him on my table. And I didn't _fucking_ know."

"I'm so sorry." It's totally inadequate, but there aren't words for this.

"She never even knew . . . why she died . . . what she'd done . . . marrying me." A thought seems to cross his mind. "Maybe she did. Maybe he told her what kind of monster she'd married."

She's beside him without even realizing she'd moved. Reaching out a hand to cover the one he still has wrapped around the filet knife, she whispers reassurance anyone else would say he doesn't deserve, "You're not."

"I lied to her. Every day."

"No." She puts her other hand to his cheek, "You forget I've seen you. With Astor and Cody. With Harrison. The way you are with them . . . with me. She knew the important part."

His grip on the blade slackens ever so slightly and he lets her slip her fingers between his to draw it away. "Tell me something good about her. Tell me about her smile or her laugh or how she made you feel. Anything. Any other memory."

She doesn't know whether she's grossly overstepped her bounds, but she needs to know . . . something, anything, about this woman other than how she died.

And it might be a selfish impulse, but it also seems to be the right one because after a minute the corners of Dexter's mouth flicker in the echo of a smile.

"She made me propose three times. I couldn't get it right. Couldn't give her the right reasons."

"What were the wrong reasons?"

"Health insurance, tax liability."

She winces in sympathy. "Tell me you didn't."

"She threw up."

"Ouch."

"Morning sickness."

"You must have gotten it right eventually."

"I stole the confession of a stalker." He looks sideways at her, waiting for her to be appalled.

She isn't. Owen borrowed Byron. Not exactly a role model of marital fidelity.

It didn't make the words mean less.

"Was it what you wanted to say?"

A flicker of something crosses his face too quickly for her to grasp and he nods.

She nods back, "Okay then." Presses a brief kiss to his lips because she doesn't know what else to say, then rests her forehead against his, and exhales. "Okay."

"I miss her."

Lumen closes her eyes against the start of tears, uncertain who she'd be crying for, afraid it might be for herself.

"I know."

That night, long after Dexter's taken the kids back to the bungalow, Lumen goes rummaging through the still packed boxes he brought over from the house until she finds a photograph of Rita. Stays up late into the night staring at it, trying to decide if she hates this woman, this seemingly perfect ghost who had the life she never wanted, and now she'd do anything to keep.

Deb, Astor, Cody, they've all made it clear. Rita was an angel.

Dexter's angel.

Lumen doesn't know what she is anymore, but she knows it's not that.

In the end, after one too many glasses of wine, she decides on 'No'. She can't hate Rita, can't even resent her really. At first she thinks it's because she got the other half, the part Rita never touched. But that's a lie.

She wants all of him, the full spectrum and everything in between. And if Rita had anything to do with making Dexter into that man, well, how is Lumen supposed to hate her for that?

She puts the picture up on the shelf near the playpen, angling it so Harrison can see it and she won't have to.

* * *

The universe, it turns out, has a twisted sense of humor.

When she ran from her wedding day, she thought she was running away from her mother's hopes, from her father's expectations, and Owen's dreams, because they weren't hers, because she'd been stumbling blindly forward to the next thing for so long she'd never stopped to ask herself if she wanted any of it. And when she finally did the answer was no.

So she ran to the place least like Minneapolis she could think of. Without thinking, without pause, without ever asking herself what she did want if she didn't want Owen, she ran.

She ran headlong into hell, got broken and melted down and reforged into something new. Something that feels harder, stronger . . .

Colder.

Lumen doesn't recognize the woman in the mirror anymore. Can't find that girl who ran away. It's like someone else, some other woman with her name and her face, died in that room, and then her life started.

Yet here she is, back at square one. Holding a baby at a Sunday barbeque.

Someone, somewhere, is fucking with her.

For a moment she can't breathe, feels like she's drowning, like she's being pulled under by the weight of a life she didn't choose.

_Run_. It flashes through her mind, an impulse that feels like a need. _Just run._

This isn't her. None of this is her. This ordinary, provincial, thoroughly normal existence. Isn't this what she ran from? Babies and barbeques and matching dinnerware? Owen was going to take her to see the world. Why is she in Miami holding a child that isn't hers?

Just then, as if in answer, she catches a glimpse of Dexter over by the bar, and suddenly she doesn't want to be anywhere else. Just here, just right here with this man who makes her glitter and flash. Who warms the blade of her in his hand and finds her edges beautiful.

Idly she follows the direction of his gaze, and finds she's unsurprised to recognize the man from the café four weeks ago.

Hums softly-

_Bye bye baby bunting  
Daddy's gone a-hunting._

Its Harrison's favorite song and he reaches up to tug at her hair in response, "Da."

"You want your daddy, huh?" she smiles, looks back at him across the lawn, and chooses.

"Me too."

_tbc_


	2. Chapter 2

It's late July when she starts to see it. The cracks in Dexter's control, minute hairline fractures that she wouldn't even notice if she couldn't feel what was seeping out, wasn't specifically attuned to it.

Maybe she's even been waiting for it in some way. After all this is where she fits, what she knows. No sister, no kids, no dead wife. Hers alone.

So why can't she bring herself to open the file?

Dexter left it for her this morning, tucked in the half open top desk drawer in a way that's so uncharacteristically careless it could only have been deliberate.

And here it sits.

An unspoken offer. A question he doesn't know how to ask.

Lumen runs the edge of her thumb along the name (_'Richard Mechem'_), and it's almost a caress. Almost.

God. What is she doing? What the _hell_ is she doing?

She doesn't know this man, he never did anything to her. Dan, Cole, Alex, Jordan . . . they were right, a balancing of the scales, a restoration of equilibrium and she's never lost a moment's sleep, never felt a drop of guilt. But this. She doesn't need this.

She _doesn't_.

And yet . . .

Abruptly she gets up, shoving the folder back in his desk. Tries to focus on ordinary things—makes lunch, does a load of laundry, goes for a run.

The mid-day heat is oppressive, smothering. She pushes herself to the point of near exhaustion, running too hard, too fast, her feet forming a rhythmic cadence on the pavement, as a voice in her head that might be conscience whispers _run, just run, keep going._

It gets louder, more insistent, until it seems like the only possible answer. And she's almost ready to obey, to turn right instead of left, when she realizes she's holding onto something so tightly her hand has started to hurt. Looks down to find the knife Dexter gave her tucked into her palm like it was made to be there. She'd picked it up without thinking, an automatic impulse, a little piece of him to carry, to keep her safe.

The voice shuts up, and she turns left, goes back to the apartment, goes home.

Leaves the file in the desk, unread.

* * *

"It's all set." Dexter announces as he comes back to the apartment that evening. "Astor's at a sleep over. Deb's got Harrison and Cody. Which leaves us . . . Mechem." He smiles, keyed up, excited. "Tonight's the night."

Lumen feels like she's about to cancel Christmas.

"Dexter-"

He keeps going, too focused to hear her as he makes his way to the bedroom. "Mechem lives alone, heavy foreclosure neighborhood, closest neighbor five houses down, and two broken street lights." he strips off his shirt and tosses it on the bed, giving her a sideways look, "Economic downturn. Criminal, isn't it?"

She fights hard to swallow back the laugh, but can't quite stop the smile that plays at the corners of her mouth.

Dexter answers it with one of his own, one of those rare, genuine, perfect smiles, and she almost changes her mind.

"Dexter-"

"I know, I know, where's the challenge?" He shakes his head and goes over to pull out the trunk. "But I thought no need to rush things, just ease into it. Like training wheels or is that too patronizing?"

"Dexter!"

And now he looks at her, really looks at her, takes in what she's wearing and more importantly, what she's not.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Oh." He sits down on the trunk, looking for all the world like someone just killed his puppy (if, you know, that kind of thing would bother him). "So, you don't-"

"I- I'm sorry. I just-" she stops short, uncertain how to complete the sentence and squeezes her eye shut.

He'd planned this for her. Gone through all the trouble of getting the details right, making it perfect. Somehow she knows that if she went back and opened the file the victims would all be women, their deaths all sexually related. Dexter's version of a thank-you-for-enduring-the-summer-with-my-step-kids-who-hate-you gift.

It's disturbing how sweet she finds that.

"Have I ruined everything?"

He shakes his head slowly, dazed. Then seems to come back to himself and looks over at her, tentative, uncertain. "Have I?"

That propels her forward, and she comes to sit next to him on the trunk. He follows her with his eyes, but doesn't say anything, just looks down at where her hand now rests beside his, their fingertips only a hairs-breadth apart. The tiniest motion and they'd be touching.

Neither of them moves.

Lumen sucks in a shaky breath, exhales. "No." She shakes her head, says it again, "No." It's becoming more true by the second, and she struggles to explain, to find the contours of her moral illusions. "It's not that I don't -"

"Don't," he whispers, cutting her off. Bringing a hand up to her cheek, he turns her face to his. "Don't explain yourself. Not about this. Not to me." He traces a thumb along her cheek bone, "I never should have-"

"Don't." It's her turn to cut him off, and she silences him with a kiss, repeating his words back to him against his lips. "Don't explain yourself. Not about this. Not to me."

* * *

She waits up for him.

Sits on the couch downing cup after cup of strong coffee until she's jittery and anxious.

In her mind she's with him, beside him every step of the way, carefully preparing the kill-room down to the last detail, taping up the plastic, setting up the pictures, giving the victims one last voice, a last moment. She's there as he waits in the dark, syringe in hand.

Lumen imagines Mechem laid out on his table, conjures the scene in vivid, excruciating high-definition—the sharp chemical burn of ammonia from the crushed ampoule; the flat, taunting, darkness of his voice; the sound of Mechem's desperation; the flash of the knife, the resistance and give of Mechem's flesh; and then the silence, the peace.

She forces herself to recall all of it, not to whitewash a single detail, and she waits.

Waits for the guilt, the self-disgust, the normal human emotions that should be attached to this.

What comes instead is fear, concern . . . worry.

It could all so easily go wrong, for all his advance preparation, his careful planning. A mistimed ambush, an unexpected guest, an unanticipated witness . . .

So many moving parts, so many little pieces, misplace a single one and she'll lose him.

The thought is like physical pain.

She should have gone with him. Why the _fuck_ didn't she go with him?

* * *

It's almost three a.m. when she hears the scrape of his key against the lock and nearly jumps out of her skin.

Dexter enters quietly, obviously expecting her to be asleep, trying not to wake her up. Stops short at the sight of her sitting there waiting for him, and for a moment she can see him start to automatically construct the lie, spin the fabrication, and then it registers . . .

The effort is unnecessary.

"Hi."

It's quiet, testing. He's trying to read her, trying to figure out what it all means.

"Hi," she whispers back.

Dropping the bag, he comes over to stand in front of her. Stares down at where she's spread out the remnants of the file on the coffee table.

Self-consciously she starts to clean it up. "I, um, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about all the things that could go wrong, and then I realized I didn't know where you were going. That if something happened, if you didn't come back, I wouldn't know- where to go, how to find you."

Without a word Dexter kneels down and reaches out to still her hands with his gloved ones. And its only then that she realizes she's shaking.

"I can't do this. I thought I could. Thought I could, I don't know, treat it like a poker game or a trip, but it's not. It's not and I can't pretend that it is."

"You can't?"

"No! I couldn't live with it. Losing you like that. All for the sake of conscious denial. Like that buys me anything . . ." she trails off at the sight of his face, the slow dawning relief that's washing over him. "Oh. Oh God, you thought I meant-"

She doesn't get to complete the thought.

In one sure, swift motion, Dexter tugs her gently forward and kisses her across the coffee table.

It's sweet and soft and tender, just like always, but there's something else, there in the tremble of his fingertips, a barely checked urgency that he can't quite disguise.

Fumbling slightly in an effort not to break the embrace, she kneels up on the coffee table and deepens the kiss, leading him where he wants to go. Crime scene photos and surveillance notes go flying, but they're past noticing.

"You have to give me details." She murmurs the words against his mouth, "Locations, timelines. And knives, you have to leave me knives."

"Lumen-"

"I need to be able to help if you need me. And if I can't- If can't, I need to be able to kill whoever took you from me."

At that Dexter pulls away, suddenly serious, "No. I'm not worth it."

"You are."

He grits his teeth and pins her with a look that has probably made grown men run. "Promise me you won't do anything so fucking stupid."

But Lumen's stopped running. "You first."

Dexter doesn't say anything, so she pushes. "Promise that if someone hurts me you won't hunt them down and put them on your table." He drops his eyes, avoiding her. Slipping off the coffee-table, she moves to straddle him, ducking her head to catch his gaze as she repeats. "Promise me, and I'll do the same."

He can't. She knows he can't. Because they're the same, because vengeance is burned in their flesh and etched on their bones.

Because she's not self-delusional enough to think killing Jordan fixed her, made her whole. She is at best an imperfect replica, a construct of broken, mangled pieces of her previous self she stole back from them in death, held together by nothing more than strength of will and this man's hands.

She won't let him be taken from her without a fight.

Slowly, deliberately, she reaches out and takes his left hand. Peeling off the black leather glove, she places a soft kiss on the flesh of his palm, smiling slightly at Dexter's sharp inhale, and draws it to her waist. Repeats the process with his right.

As she puts his hand to her cheek, something inside him finally (_finally_) breaks, and he surges forward, catching her lips with his and leading her down to the floor.

They make love there amidst the crime scene photographs and blueprints and surveillance notes, and when it's done she waits for regret, for remorse.

It doesn't come.

Lumen stays in Miami, compromising herself by inches.

And it feels dangerously like love.


End file.
